Hope and the sea - in the box mix by Jente

[jentevdwater]

Not bad. Not bad at all. Good tone throughout the song. I do have some concerns and comments though. I do like the environment you created for the drums but I am hearing some pumping on the cymbals as a result of what appears to be pretty restrictive compression on them. I am not hearing the expressiveness of the player in your drum treatment. Every snare hit sounds like every other one but that doesn't reflect the dynamics of the player, IMHO. That also results in the bass guitar, which has some very expressive phrases in the various breaks, to be lost behind the kit. Your guitar treatments and vocals are spot on. I would like to hear the guitar come up against the sax at the end where they trade phrases. I established my levels in that section by balancing the parts in mono. Pretty good, overall.

Thanks dude, yeah I can totally agree with your comments. I've compressed the snare quite hard and was also really struggling with the snare throughout the song. So something to keep in mind . I only applied some parallel compression to the drum kit, am not sure if this is the reason for the pumping, will take a look at that. Furthermore there is 0 compression on the overheads whatsoever.

The guitars definitely have to be up in volume in the end. I also heard that after checking the mix again today

There will be a new version up soon, like to hear your feedback on that one!